Now that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has denied Hobby Lobby’s application for an emergency injunction protecting them from Obamacare’s HHS Mandate on abortion and birth control, Hobby Lobby has decided to defy the federal government to remain true to their religious beliefs, at enormous risk and financial cost.

Hobby Lobby is wholly owned and controlled by the Green family, who are evangelical Christians. The Greens are committed to running their business in accordance with their Christian faith, believing that God wants them to conduct their professional business in accordance with the family’s understanding of the Bible. Hobby Lobby’s mission statement includes, “Honoring the Lord in all we do by operating the company … consistent with Biblical principles.”

The HHS Mandate goes into effect for Hobby Lobby on Jan. 1, 2013. The Greens correctly understand that some of the drugs the HHS Mandate requires them to cover at no cost in their healthcare plans cause abortions.

Today Hobby Lobby announced that they will not comply with this mandate to become complicit in abortion, which the Greens believe ends an innocent human life. Given Hobby Lobby’s size (it has 572 stores employing more than 13,000 people), by violating the HHS Mandate, it will be subject to over $1.3 million in fines per day. That means over $40 million in fines in January alone. If their case takes another ten months to get before the Supreme Court—which would be the earliest it could get there under the normal order of business—the company would incur almost a half-billion dollars in fines. And then of course the Supreme Court would have to write an opinion in what would likely be a split decision with dissenters, which could easily take four or six months and include hundreds of millions of dollars in additional penalties.

This is civil disobedience, consistent with America’s highest traditions when moral issues are at stake. The Greens are a law-abiding family. They have no desire to defy their own government. But as the Founders launched the American Revolution because they believed the British government was violating their rights, the Greens believe that President Barack Obama and Secretary Kathleen Sebelius are commanding the Greens to sin against God, and that no government has the lawful authority to do so.

The Christian tradition of defying government commands to do something wrong goes back to the very birth of Christianity. When the apostles were ordered not to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with anyone, the Book of Acts records: “Peter and the other apostles replied: ‘We must obey God rather than men! The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead—whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree.’”

Eleven of the twelve apostles—including Peter—would lose their lives for the sake of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ; only the apostle John died of old age. They were determined to obey God’s will at all costs.

This issue of civil disobedience is never to be undertaken lightly. The Bible teaches Christians to submit to all legitimate governmental authority (e.g., Romans 13:1), and so a person can only disobey the government when there is no other way to obey God.

But here in America, the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land, and in its First Amendment it protects against a government establishment of an official religion and separately protects the free exercise of religion. On top of that, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) to specifically add an additional layer of protection against government actions that violate a person’s religious beliefs.

The HHS Mandate is a gross violation of the religious beliefs of the Green family. The issue before the courts here is whether the Greens religious-liberty rights include running their secular, for-profit business consistent with their religious beliefs. In other words, is religious liberty just what you do in church on a Sunday morning, or does it include what you do during the week at your job?

The Greens are now putting their fortunes on the line to do what they believe is right. The courts should side with them, affirming a broad scope of religious liberty under the Constitution and RFRA. And the Supreme Court should resolve this matter with dispatch in their favor.

Millions of Christians across the country feel exactly the same way as the Greens. The Obama administration has issued a statist command that is a declaration of war on people of faith who object to abortion, and civil disobedience could break out all over the country unless the courts set this matter right—and quickly.

Associated PressOKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A federal judge Monday rejected Hobby Lobby Stores Inc.'s request to block part of the federal health care overhaul that requires the arts and craft supply company to provide insurance coverage for the morning-after and week-after birth control pills.In a 28-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton denied a request by Hobby Lobby to prevent the government from enforcing portions of the health care law mandating insurance coverage for contraceptives the company's Christian owners consider objectionable.The Oklahoma City-based company and a sister company, Mardel Inc., sued the government in September, claiming the mandate violates the owners' religious beliefs. The owners contend the morning-after and week-after birth control pills are tantamount to abortion because they can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in a woman's womb. They also object to providing coverage for certain kinds of intrauterine devices.At a hearing earlier this month, a government lawyer said the drugs do not cause abortions and that the U.S. has a compelling interest in mandating insurance coverage for them.In his ruling denying Hobby Lobby's request for an injunction, Heaton said that while churches and other religious organizations have been granted constitutional protection from the birth-control provisions, "Hobby Lobby and Mardel are not religious organizations.""Plaintiffs have not cited, and the court has not found, any case concluding that secular, for-profit corporations such as Hobby Lobby and Mardel have a constitutional right to the free exercise of religion," the ruling said.Read this story at news.yahoo.com ...

The practice of human abortion violates every single clause of the stated purposes of the United States Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land, and its explicit, imperative requirements. It is the worst sort of lawless rebellion against the laws of nature and of nature’s God.

The stated purposes of the Constitution of the United States, the Supreme Law of the Land:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Abortion is NOT "the law of the land."

The idea that it is the law of the land is the biggest, most destructive lie ever told in America.

The Supreme Law of the Land states as its first purpose the formation of a more perfect Union. The practice of human abortion destroys the most fundamental familial bonds that unite humanity, the natural ties between a mother and her child, destroys the unity of families and communities, and is well on its way to destroying the Union we call America.

Abortion is NOT "the law of the land."

The Supreme Law of the Land states as its purpose the establishment of Justice. There can be no greater physical injustice committed towards any innocent person than to murder them.

Abortion is NOT "the law of the land."

The Supreme Law of the Land states as its purpose the insuring of domestic Tranquility. The practice of human abortion is the cruelest violence that could possibly be committed against women, children, and their families. It has, in fact, filled our land with violence, burdening the national conscience with guilt for the shed blood of countless tens of millions of innocent little boys and girls.

Abortion is NOT "the law of the land."

The Supreme Law of the Land states as its purpose the provision of the common Defense. That is, by definition, the defense of ALL persons in America. The practice of human abortion is the destruction of the child AND the destruction of Equality.

Abortion is NOT "the law of the land."

The Supreme Law of the Land states as its purpose the promotion of the general Welfare. That is, by definition, the welfare, or well-being, of ALL persons in America. Again, the practice of human abortion is the destruction of the child AND the destruction of Equality.

Abortion is NOT "the law of the land."

The Supreme Law of the Land states as its purpose the securing of the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. The practice of human abortion has already obliterated nearly an entire generation, depriving each individual victim of any possible chance to enjoy any of the Blessings of Liberty, and, by erasing entire bloodlines, it is obliterating Posterity itself.

Abortion is NOT "the law of the land."

The Supreme Law of the Land, in the Fifth Amendment, explicitly and imperatively forbids the killing of any innocent person, the willful destruction of any person who has not been charged, tried, and convicted of a capital offense. Abortion is the grossest violation of Due Process imaginable.

"No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law." -- The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Abortion is NOT "the law of the land."

The Supreme Law of the Land, in the Fourteenth Amendment, explicitly and imperatively requires every State in the Union to equally protect the right to life of every innocent person, and requires that each and every person be provided with the Equal Protection of the laws by each State. The practice of human abortion is the grossest violation of Equal Protection imaginable.

"No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." -- The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Even if abortion was "the law of the land," which it is not, any such lawless law or constitution would be NULL AND VOID anyway, grossly violating as it must the first Law of Nature, which is the absolute right and DUTY of the people, and of ALL governments, to protect innocent life, individual liberty, and private property.

"Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature." -- Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists, the Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting, November 20, 1772

"An unjust law is no law at all." – St. Augustine of Hippo

"Good and wise men, in all ages...have supposed, that the Deity, from the relations, we stand in, to Himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is, indispensably, obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature, which, being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is, of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries at all times. No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid, derive all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original." -- William Blackstone

"When human laws contradict or discountenance the means, which are necessary to preserve the essential rights of any society, they defeat the proper end of all laws, and so become null and void." -- Alexander Hamilton

Not only is the practice of human abortion NOT “the law of the land,” it COULD NOT BE the law of a land premised as this one is in a clear understanding and acknowledgment of the laws of nature and of nature’s God. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain UNALIENABLE rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..." -- The Declaration of Independence

Every elected executive, every legislator, every judge, that allows the practice of human abortion to continue anywhere in America is in gross violation of their sacred oath of office. They have, as our constitutional republic’s founders charged against King George III in our nation’s charter, the Declaration of Independence, “abdicated government here by declaring us out of [their] protection and waging war against us.”

They must, by any and all lawful means, be removed and replaced by those who understand the foundations for law in America and the most fundamental and important obligations of their oaths.

That, by the mercy and grace of God, is the only hope we have to prevent the further destruction of America.

One of the primary planks of the Republican Platform is the party's commitment to recognizing the Fourteenth Amendment protection of unborn children. In this video clip, Mitt Romney states his opposition to that commitment. Mitt Romney is not a prolife candidate. Vote for life in 2012. Vote for Tom Hoefling. tomhoefling.com

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."

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"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."